Comments on: UK Photography Impacted By New Laws

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:26:16 +0000

Quality and enlightening article Nick. It’s worth getting all the information you possibly can into the EXIF and IPTC tags but I imagine it’s hard to prove that a printed image ever had those tags when it was found. I don’t like to splatter my photos with big watermarks but maybe that’s the future..

By: jimbean

jimbean — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:18:02 +0000

Nick said: I think you’d be hard pressed to take a photo from Corbis/Getty and claim you couldn’t find the owner.
I am afraid Nick that you are forgetting that Getty has Hulton and Corbis Bettmann not to mention all the other acquisitons over the years. There is no doubt all those old agencies are riddled with orphans.

By: nickpotter

nickpotter — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 20:26:16 +0000

Jon, could you expand on your comment about Corbis and Getty?

In theory they should be okay as pro photographers who place images for sale on there usually take the time to make sure all the images are tagged with their contact details and the stock sites themselves tend to add watermarks. I think you’d be hard pressed to take a photo from Corbis/Getty and claim you couldn’t find the owner.

However, if the new law makes it easier for consumers of photography to steal images for sites such as Flickr, Smugmug, Facebook and personal sites then demand for images at the main stock agencies is going to drop (in fact this is already happening). So they may take action to help slow the erosion of their revenue through people turning to other channels.

By: Jon Eland

Jon Eland — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:39:43 +0000

This really annoys me – how is it ok to extend copyright on one area but not another? “This is difficult to manage, so we won’t” is a weird policy to take. I suspect all this will mean is a lot of us reducing the size of images we upload online and include larger and larger watermarks – which all makes life less rich for everyone.

But, it’s the sort of law that will probably cause all sorts of problems and lead to large IP owners either finding a solution or way around the problem – or to work to change the legislation. I really can’t imagine Corbis and Getty Images sitting on their hands with the UK being one of the larger markets for them.